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Here’s a programme full of curiosities and strange delights. It’s the sort of thing that keeps you cheerfully amazed and amused in the same way that a copy of The Guinness Book of World Records once kept nine-year-old boys amazed and amused all through Boxing Day.

Ostensibly, it’s about the work of the team who put that noble reference work together. Their working life involves assessing the world’s largest cream-filled biscuit, say, or the longest arm-hair ever, or the most eggs crushed with the head in a minute – and taking it all seriously.But it’s also about the urge to attempt such feats. The ghost of Roy Castle will be smiling down on the scene where a Nepalese man jumps through an unstringed tennis racket 90 times in three minutes. It’s a sight you don’t forget in a hurry. Best of all, look out for the wonderful sequence where the team try to establish the cat that has the world’s loudest purr.

About this programme

Part one of two. Documentary following adjudicators as they travel around the globe to uncover the stories of record holders, from the world's smallest man to the woman with the most piercings. With endeavours ranging from the superhuman to the bizarre, this programme meets the individuals behind the achievements and asks what drives them to compete for a place in the Guinness Book of Records.